Microsoft Copilot - Excel has forever changed

Summary

Microsoft recently released CoPilot, an AI assistant powered by OpenAI's GPT-3 model. It allows users to interact with Microsoft apps using natural language. This video tests CoPilot, mainly to see if it's just an over-glorified macro tool. CoPilot can generate insights and visualizations in Excel and write essays in Word. However, it struggled with large Excel datasets, often freezing up. It relies on pivot tables rather than Python code for analysis. Overall, CoPilot shows promise but needs improvement, especially in Excel. More testing will come as it's still in preview.

Takeaways

• 😀 Microsoft recently released CoPilot, an AI assistant powered by OpenAI's GPT-4 model, allowing natural language interaction with Microsoft apps.
• 🤔 The author tests CoPilot's capabilities across Excel, Word, PowerPoint and email to evaluate its usefulness.
• 😮 CoPilot can generate graphs, pivot tables, essays and presentations based on prompts, but has limitations handling large datasets in Excel.
• 📈 CoPilot for Microsoft 365 has more capabilities like Teams integration, data protection and custom chatbots.
• 💡 CoPilot Pro is available for $20/month with access to GPT-4 during non-peak times on Windows, Mac and iPad.
• 😕 The author was disappointed with CoPilot's Excel performance and inability to handle large datasets during testing.
• 🔍 Microsoft demonstrated more advanced Excel functionality than the author was able to replicate in hands-on testing.
• 🤨 The author is concerned about using confidential data with CoPilot Pro since chat data is not saved privately.
• ⏱ CoPilot was very slow and buggy in testing, but Microsoft notes it is still in preview version.
• 😊 Overall the author sees potential in CoPilot capabilities but limitations remain in this early preview version.

Q & A

What is Microsoft Co-Pilot?

Co-Pilot is an AI assistant by Microsoft powered by OpenAI's GPT-4 model. It allows users to interact with popular Microsoft apps like Excel, Word, etc. using natural language.

What are the different pricing tiers for Co-Pilot?

There is a free version. Co-Pilot Pro costs $20/month. Co-Pilot for Microsoft 365 costs $30/user/month with additional enterprise features.

What Microsoft apps support Co-Pilot integration?

Co-Pilot Pro works with Excel, Word, PowerPoint and OneNote on Windows, Mac and iPad. Co-Pilot for Microsoft 365 supports additional apps like Outlook and Teams.

What kind of tasks can Co-Pilot automate?

It can help with data analysis in Excel, generating essays and presentations in Word and PowerPoint, summarizing meetings and assigning follow-ups in Outlook, etc.

How does data protection work with Co-Pilot?

Personal data is not protected with Co-Pilot Pro. Co-Pilot for Microsoft 365 provides enterprise-grade data encryption and ensures data isn't used to train AI models.

Can Co-Pilot work with local files or do they need to be in the cloud?

Currently Co-Pilot requires files to be stored in OneDrive or SharePoint. It does not work with local files.

What were some limitations noticed during testing?

Co-Pilot struggled with large datasets in Excel (failed over 40,000 rows). The Excel integration is mostly pivot table based rather than Python scripts.

How did Co-Pilot perform in Word and PowerPoint?

It generated a decent quality 3-page essay on Excel and a basic presentation in PowerPoint which could serve as a starting point.

What additional capabilities does Co-Pilot Studio provide?

Co-Pilot Studio allows organizations to build customized AI chatbots tailored to their business needs on top of Microsoft 365 apps.

What disclaimers exist on the Co-Pilot preview?

Microsoft labels Co-Pilot as a 'Preview', so capabilities are expected to improve over time as it moves beyond the initial testing phase.

Outlines

00:00

😀 Microsoft announces AI assistant CoPilot

Microsoft announced CoPilot, an AI assistant powered by OpenAI's GPT-3 model, at a November 2022 event. It allows natural language interaction in Microsoft apps like Excel, Word, PowerPoint to automate tasks. It can analyze data in Excel, generate plans in Word, build presentations in PowerPoint, and draft emails summarizing work.

05:00

📊 Testing CoPilot data analysis capabilities in Excel

CoPilot was tested on a 1 million row dataset of data science job postings in Excel. It was buggy and slow, often not responding. It only works with Excel tables and seems to rely on pivot tables, not Python. With smaller datasets ~500 rows it provided some basic data insights like averages and histograms. But it could not recreate complex multi-graph analysis shown by Microsoft.

10:02

🤔 Overall impressions and concerns about Copilot

CoPilot shows promise for automation across Microsoft apps, generating long essays in Word and presentation slides in PowerPoint. But Excel performance was disappointing with inability to handle large datasets and recreate complex analysis. As it's still in preview, CoPilot is expected to improve over time.

Keywords

💡Co-Pilot

Co-Pilot is Microsoft's new AI-powered assistant that allows users to interact with Microsoft apps using natural language prompts. It is powered by OpenAI's GPT models and aims to automate tedious workflows. The video explores the capabilities of Co-Pilot through hands-on testing.

💡Data Analysis

A core feature highlighted in the video is Co-Pilot's ability to analyze data and generate insights using tools like Excel. However, the presenter finds that Co-Pilot has limitations with large datasets, only working with around 500 rows of data.

💡Microsoft Apps

The video emphasizes how Co-Pilot is embedded within popular Microsoft apps like Excel, Word, PowerPoint to streamline workflows. It works across Windows, Mac, and iPad versions.

💡Automation

A major promise of Co-Pilot is its ability to automate tedious tasks and workflows through natural language interaction. However, the hands-on testing reveals gaps between expectations and actual capabilities.

💡Data Privacy

For organizations, Microsoft claims enterprise-grade data protection for Co-Pilot. But the presenter notes that confidential data may not be safe when using the consumer Co-Pilot Pro.

💡Pricing

Co-Pilot Pro is $20/month for consumers. The enterprise version is $30/month per user. Cost was previously a barrier for small businesses.

💡Customization

Co-Pilot promises the ability to build customized chatbots. This allows tailoring for specific workflows but capabilities are currently limited.

💡GPT Models

Co-Pilot is powered by OpenAI's GPT language models. Access to advanced models like GPT-4 allows more human-like responses.

💡Hype vs Reality

While Microsoft promotes Co-Pilot's capabilities, the hands-on testing reveals gaps between the hype and reality in areas like Excel integration.

💡Preview Version

As noted by the disclaimer, Co-Pilot is currently in Preview so capabilities are expected to improve over time before final release.

Highlights

Microsoft releases Co-Pilot, an AI assistant by OpenAI, integrated into popular Microsoft apps.

Co-Pilot allows natural language interaction and performs complex tasks in Excel, like data analysis and graph generation.

In Word, Co-Pilot can create comprehensive action plans and even add images to make documents more engaging.

Co-Pilot's integration with PowerPoint streamlines presentation creation based on Word document input.

Co-Pilot in Outlook can draft and rewrite emails, ensuring professional communication.

The AI summarizes key points and tasks from meetings, aiding in post-meeting follow-ups.

Co-Pilot Pro, priced at $20/month, offers advanced features and is available on multiple platforms including Mac and iPad.

Microsoft 365's Co-Pilot includes exclusive features like Teams integration and enterprise-grade data protection.

Microsoft Graph in Co-Pilot connects data across apps, offering powerful, streamlined insights.

Commercial data protection ensures confidentiality with no data saved or used to train the model.

Co-Pilot allows building of custom chatbots, offering personalized automation solutions.

Initial setup issues and the requirement for an update license in Excel indicate some user setup complexities.

Co-Pilot's performance in Excel is promising but shows limitations with handling large datasets.

In Word, Co-Pilot's generated content is rich and up-to-date, indicating strong language model capabilities.

PowerPoint integration with Co-Pilot shows potential but may require additional formatting and refinement.

The preview version of Co-Pilot shows promise, with expectations of improvement and more features in future updates.

Transcripts

that in nerds Microsoft just released

co-pilot an AI assistant powered by open

ai's most powerful model it allows you

to use natural language to interact with

most popular Microsoft apps I've been

putting it through some tests so we're

going to be going over everything you

need to know for it and mainly I want to

find out if this is just an over

glorified clipping back in November

Microsoft had a keynote event and that's

what brings us here today that's why

today we're announcing co-pilot our

vision for everyday AI compan for you

and this AI companion would be

integrated into all the leading apps

from Microsoft so let's say your boss

tased you to do some ad hoc analysis

well first in Excel you can use co-pilot

to dive into the data it can generate

some new columns that your boss probably

never heard of so he thinks you're

thinking outside the box from there it

can either generate one graph for that

new column or take it a step further and

do multiple graphs for all the data so

now that co-pilot found your problem now

you need to get an action plan together

inside of word you can have it generate

a day-by-day plan of how you plan to

accomplish this task that you're never

actually going to do you can even

generate some cute pictures of you and

your co-workers to make it seem like you

enjoy your job but a project isn't

official until it has a PowerPoint so

you feed that word document into

PowerPoint and co-pilot gets to work

generating the slides for your plane of

action man you're going to be a hero so

finally we need to tell everybody how

great you are we can draft an email

summarizing all co-pilots I mean your

work it can even rewrite it if you're a

little too harsh You've Got Mail now the

final step is to share your insights in

order to solidify your dominance by the

way don't which just love when nobody

turns on their camera now when Isaiah

arrives late like he always does he no

longer has to look like a fool instead

he can just ask co-pilot what happened

so far in the meeting after the meeting

all the different insights are

summarized not only are key topics

broken down but also follow-up tasks

that you assign your co-workers so now

you have back up from co-pilot when they

don't deliver on what they say we're

going to do this is pretty great I can

not only automate all those different

tedious tasks that I'm doing dayto day

but also I can shift some of my workload

strategically to my co-workers so let's

shift gears and get into what is

actually available with these co-pilot

subscriptions co-pilot Pro was the one

that was recently released and comes

with a $20 a month price tag it has

access to the same things as the free

version including the ability to use

co-pilot which is kind of confusing with

the name that they're using but it's

basically chat GPT this bad boy allows

free access to opening eyes most

advanced model GPT 4 well at least

during non- peak times additionally with

co-pilot Pro you have access to it in

Outlook word PowerPoint and OneNote now

the one thing I was blown away with this

is that these apps are not limited to

the windows only versions instead you

can also use it on the Mac versions and

even the iPad versions now for

organizations they have co-pilot for

Microsoft 365 which was what was

released back in November however at

that time they had a minimum requirement

to get 300 licenses so with this release

they announced that co-pilot from

Microsoft 365 is now generally available

for small businesses and it comes in at

$30 per person per per month they're

also announcing that they're removing

that ridiculous requirement to have 300

seat minimums which would cost you

around $113,000 now for co-pilot for

Microsoft 365 you get it some extra

features you get co-pilot teams

Microsoft graph and Enterprise grade

data protection now what's cool about

Microsoft graph is it connects and maps

all your different data across all your

different apps within Microsoft Access

to this by copilot allows it to be even

more powerful and streamlining insights

that may be connected AC across

different applications now for data

protection Microsoft says this when

you're signed in co-pilot with Microsoft

untra ID you get commercial data

protection for free which means chat

data isn't saved Microsoft has no eyes

on access and your data isn't used to

train the model so this is great for

organizations when they're dealing with

confidential and secure data but when

you're talking about an individual using

co-pilot Pro still not safe it sounds

like to put This Confidential data into

now the very last thing including these

paid subscriptions is customization that

you're able to build customized chat

bots on top of any solution and this is

very similar to chat gbts gbts that

you're able to build customized chat

bots on top of any solution now for

co-pilot Pro this actually isn't

available yet and it's going to have its

own app called co-pilot gbt Builder but

for organizations this is going to be

available through co-pilot Studio which

seems like it's more powerful in

building gpts than open ai's option all

right let's actually get into doing some

Hands-On testing of co-pilot and for

this we're going to be doing in one of

the apps that I'm most most skeptical

about it performing well in and that's

Microsoft Excel now I purchased co-pilot

Pro and applied it to my active

subscription that I'm Ming off my

brother for using his family plane after

processing it it directed me to the

co-pilot app which could care less about

when I booted up co-pilot for the first

time co-pilot was nowhere to be found

after some research on forums I found

out that I had to go into my account

information and click update license

then once I restarted Excel it was right

there now with this preview version of

co-pilot launch it pred me to go through

an example which provided me this

fictitious data set that I can now go

into analyzing I used the suggested

prompt of show Data Insights and it

generated this visualization on Revenue

it opened this analysis in a new sheet

not only providing the pivot table that

it did for the analysis but also the

pivot chart the most impressive thing

was this suggested prompt of add all

insights to grid and it was able to

generate six highly engaging yet very

suspicious graphs these things were a

little too good so I wanted to test it

out on my own data all right so let's

start with this data set on data science

job postings and in it I have over a

million different jobs so there's a good

amount of data to test the limits of

co-pilot now one quick note Microsoft

was a little slimy in that in order to

use co-pilot you have to have your files

either saved in one drive or SharePoint

can't work with local files so contrary

to my normal work practice I had to

upload this to the cloud anyway let's

dive into this data the first thing to

note is it only works with Excel tables

so we have to convert it so now that

it's in a table it looks like co-pilot

is now picking up on all this different

data and providing suggestions so let's

just try out the first prompt of showing

Data Insights and I'm already noticing

that it's pretty buggy and really really

slow all right so I'm already run into

my first issue of co-pilot not

generating a response to my prompt now I

don't think that these issues have to

deal with my computer because co-pilot

should be running technically in the

cloud right now I'm using about 50% of

memory and I am on a MacBook Pro so I'm

having to use a virtual machine in order

to run Windows and thus run Excel and

co-pilot and this virtual machine has 16

GB a memory setup for it and I think

that should be more than enough to do

these type of operations so we're going

to go with a smaller data set I have

this one on kaggle on data analyst job

postings and if we scrolling down to it

has a lot of different stuff for job

postings but mainly it's about 40,000

different job postings so a lot smaller

data set all right so I got the smaller

data set loaded in but I'm still having

issues with this co-pilot is just

thinking and thinking and thinking one

eternity later all right so I've been

fumble co-pilot for the past hour trying

to get to work and I finally figured out

I can't put in a gigantic data set into

it right now I'm working with around 500

rows of data I tried it at like 510,000

and even 40,000 and none of those were

able to work co-pilot basically just

locked up anyway the first thing I did

was ask it to show a data insight and it

found this because it have salary data

and also the type of job whether it's

full-time part-time or contract had it

add it to a new sheet and it found this

pretty interesting Insight actually that

part-time gets paid paid more than

full-time and gets paid more than

contract now it seems like the main way

that co-pilot is actually working and

doing a lot of this analysis is through

pivot tables and pivot visualizations or

pivot graphs and that seems to be the

main method of it actually working

previously when Microsoft demonstrated

this they were showing that it was going

to be working through their python

functionality that they inserted into

Excel and from what I'm testing so far

this is not true so let's actually

provide it some guided tasking I'm going

to have it analyze the salary cost

column in this data set so it provides

me this basically showing the average

salary from this column even though I

asked for a visualization so I asked him

more specifically to provide me a

histogram of the salary yearly column

and it looks like I generated this let's

check it out and not too bad this graph

is looking Bland looking so I prompted

that make the histogram of salary yearly

more visually appealing I had to specify

the column because it keeps on trying to

make graphs of other columns anyway it

looks like it made this new one which

looks exactly the same okay okay great I

guess the one major problem with

co-pilot that I'm having is this with

that generated example that it came up

with with the data that it provided and

then also the ability to provide those

multiple different visualizations was

able to do this with the data it

provided but whenever I provided my data

it cannot do this now I also tried to

use co-pilot in other products like word

and PowerPoint in word I asked it to

generate an essay around Microsoft Excel

and IT provided three pages of pretty

in-depth analysis of Microsoft Excel

which if I would to asked Chachi BT this

it wouldn't provideed me near as much

reading through it it seems like it has

a lot of upto-date information

referencing that there's 750 million

Excel users then to complement my essay

I use co-pilot to design a presentation

on how great Microsoft Excel is this one

I was a little bit less impressed with

because it seemed like it needed some

work with the format but regardless it

looks like it's actually a good starting

point to get going with building out a

further presentation all right so

overall I'm liking what I'm seeing with

this integration of co-pilot in inside

of these different Microsoft apps I am

however disappointed in performance of

Microsoft Excel specifically I wasn't

able to recreate a lot of the different

functionality that Microsoft has shown

in YouTube videos but more importantly

I'm most concerned about the data

limitations that co-pilot has in that I

had to limit my data to around 500 rows

to get co-pilot to even work but I will

call out these big letters right next to

co-pilot is that it is in its preview

version so it's only going to get better

and I'll be making more videos on it as

it does all right as always you got

value out of this video smash that like

button and with that I'll see you in the

next one